


no sympathy, sentiment, nonsense

by goosemixtapes



Category: Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Genre: F/F, ah. my writing specialty. lesbianism, pip appears for two seconds, this gets a little internalized homophobia tm it is the eighteen hundreds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:08:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26936380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goosemixtapes/pseuds/goosemixtapes
Summary: - It is a kinder thought, that she cannot love anyone at all. Better than the alternative.Estella meets a girl in town.
Relationships: Estella Havisham/Biddy (Great Expectations)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 19





	no sympathy, sentiment, nonsense

**Author's Note:**

> *opening up the ao3 post function for the first time in literal years for my god damn GREAT EXPECTATIONS fanfiction*
> 
> thank you to the only other gay person in my english class who jokingly said "estella x biddy" and gave me brainworms. i didn't even mean to write this i haven't even finished the fucking book i just got possessed this morning and sat down and bam! here we are.

It is a strange outcome in the great game of chance, that Estella makes the acquaintance of Biddy at all, because Estella does not often leave Satis House. Oh, she would very much like to - it is exhausting to live as the only light in a dark dark house, and sometimes when she escapes into the courtyard she worries the sunlight will scald her arms, turned so pale and papery by the artificial dim of curtains pulled thick over every window. She relishes the moments outside, the wind and the sky and the soft dark rich earth beneath her toes. But most often she is inside, tending to Miss Havisham ( _Mother_ , Estella reminds herself, _Mother_ , but she does not like to call her as such).

Mostly her territory extends to the gate, where she receives visitors, and no further. It is only when the other maids are taken ill, or otherwise occupied, that Estella gets to sojourn into town.

On the day she meets Biddy she intends the baker’s, for her birthday is tomorrow; she will be a round nine years old. Miss Havisham ( _Mother, Mother, Mother_ ) does not partake in things like fresh-baked bread, despite having the money for it. But every now and then she allows Estella a rare indulgence. And the bakery is near the tailor’s, and Estella needs a new dress anyhow, and so she has been sent to carry out the acquisition of her own gifts, because how dare her mother leave the house for her only daughter.

These are the thoughts hanging sharp and bitter in Estella’s mind when she runs - quite literally - into another.

The other girl is about her height; that’s where their similarities end. Almost before they touch she skitters back, gathering her ragged skirts about her, eyes gone wide. “I - I’m sorry, miss, dreadful sorry, I am!”

Estella ought to be irritable. She knows this very well. She is usually irritable. Still, she is caught for a critical moment just looking at the other - at the hair wisping messily across her face, at the freckles scattered across both her arms, at her eyes. She has very large eyes, this girl. Almost bovine. Soft and limpid and dark as the rich earth in the garden.

“I’m dreadful sorry,” the girl repeats, and Estella realizes that they’ve both dropped their baskets.

She doesn’t move to recover hers. She widens her stance and demands, “What’s your name?”

The other girl’s hands fist up in her skirts. Her clothing is tattered and frayed, the colors long-faded, the fabric moth-eaten, and her boots are crudely thick. And yet there is something so charming about her that Estella thinks she could simply sit and stare for some time, but for she asked a question that hasn’t been answered.

“Your _name,_ ” she repeats archly. Still, she feels an uncharacteristic pang of guilt when the girl flinches.

“Biddy, miss,” she peeps, head bobbing. When Estella does not react: “My - my grandmother teaches the evening school here in town.”

She keeps glancing toward her empty dropped basket. Estella picks it up and offers it back to her. Their hands brush on the handle for a moment - Biddy’s fingers warm and rough.

“The evening school,” Estella repeats.

Having recovered her basket, Biddy looks a little prouder; her chest puffs out the slightest bit. “Yes, miss, in town, and I help her now and then - I’m off to get eggs for her now, miss -”

“You haven’t got to call me miss,” Estella says, tilting her head. “My name’s Estella. How old are you?”

“Eight years old, m - Estella.” Biddy ducks her head; again, with a hint of pride, “Eight years old and three fourths.”

Estella bounces in place, not bothering to hide her smile, excited that her lie is only one day untrue: “I’m _nine._ ”

Biddy looks impressed. Estella preens.

“Would you like to play with me?” she says, for she can think of no better birthday present than this. The bakery, the tailor - both pale in comparison to spending more time with this strange, freckled, huge-eyed common girl.

She has Havisham’s cards tucked into her coat, for sometimes she forgets to put them away after the blacksmith’s boy has come. They sit off to the side of the road, she and Biddy, their baskets and errands forgotten, and play.

Estella should win. She most often does. She always triumphs over the blacksmith’s boy, who smells of ash and soot and stares at her with terrified reverence.

Biddy beats her three times in a row.

Estella has trouble caring. She has trouble, too, paying attention to the game, when her eyes track Biddy’s worn little hands, and the freckles on Biddy’s cheeks and neck and arms, and the wisps of hair falling into Biddy’s eyes - Biddy’s eyes. Biddy has the most gorgeous eyes. Big, soft, wet. Dark as the earth in the garden; dark as the nights when Estella stares up at the stars and wonders if all the world is as cold as the constellations.

Here, with Biddy, the world feels quite warm.

Biddy calls the knaves Jacks, but strangely, Estella does not care.

/

She returns home late in the afternoon, her errands forgotten entirely, and is scolded so harshly that she runs away to a far corner of Satis House to claw at the floor and muffle her cries. Tears streak down her face, cold and wet, and Estella brushes them away, because she is cold again now that Biddy has gone and the cold-hearted do not cry.

She is not allowed out again for some weeks. On her first morning back in town, she goes at once to the spot on the road where she met Biddy, but nobody is there.

It takes two trips into town for Estella to approach the tailor and ask after Biddy. The news - that Biddy’s grandmother has died, that Biddy has been taken in at the forge, that Biddy will no longer be in town - is like stones falling into Estella’s stomach.

She does not visit town very often, anymore.

Mostly she sits in the garden and curls her bare toes into the earth and closes her eyes and imagines that Biddy is sitting with her, and when she opens her eyes they will giggle and run through the courtyards and crash to the ground smearing dirt on their skirts to play another round of cards.

Estella got to see Biddy once. The blacksmith’s boy sees Biddy every day. Estella hates him with a fierceness reserved otherwise for the devil.

/

Estella is not sure what she expected to grow into - a storm, perhaps, or a blade. As it is she grows into a woman, and scolds herself for being surprised.

She is a gorgeous woman, too, pale and slender and dark-haired and long-necked and alluring. Havisham tells Estella she is beautiful, and that no man will ignore her, and that she will have their hearts in her hands to crush like baby birds, bones breaking under her fingers, and her cackling makes it easy to imagine the snapping sounds.

Estella, the girl, did not care about men. Estella, the woman, discovers she hates them.

They are wretched rough things - all large hairy arms and posturing stances and the gruff scratch of their stubble against Estella’s smooth cheek. Havisham has spent years teaching her to despise them, but then, Estella thinks coldly, perhaps she never needed Havisham at all. She is a quick study. She flutters her eyelashes and gains their gazes and kisses their awful stubbled cheeks and her skin crawls like it might split open and dump her out. She wishes it would.

Pip is the only decent one of the bunch, for he at least has some decorum. He never plasters his hands all over her bosom, never paws at her like a dog. He clings to her side, a moth drawn to the light, but nothing more than a moth - she could flick him away, tear off his wings and crush him under her boots, if only she wanted to, and he knows this, and he is kind to her all the same. And there is something distressingly confusing in that. He wants everything; she gives him nothing; he cares for her anyway.

Even starstruck as he is, there’s something charming about him - about his soft, girlish face; about his small frame and his lack of a beard. When Estella kisses him on the cheek, she feels nothing, but this is welcome, still, in comparison to the illness she feels touching the others. Better to feel frigid and empty than sick to her stomach.

He clings. He wants. He loves, or he thinks he does. But still, he is kind, and it tugs at Estella’s hollow chest, that she cannot return his feelings.

Sometimes she sits at her window long into the night, letting the candles burn out until she is clothed in darkness, and she gazes out the window at the stars, and tries to imagine it. Taking Pip’s hand. Kissing Pip. Marrying Pip, under Havisham’s ever-watchful witch’s eye - and then what? Breaking his heart? Ruining the sweet softness of his face?

Or worse, if she doesn’t break him - living with him. Communion, consummation, conjugal touch in the places she does not want him to touch and her body going round-wombed and alien - and Estella draws all of herself into one small huddle in her chair and bites down on her hand so she does not scream. A woman shall not scream. A woman - a woman - a woman should love a man, or a woman should love his pain, but what is Estella, if she cannot love at all?

What is Estella, if she cannot love at all, but if her eyes are drawn to swishing skirts in the streets of London, and if she dreams of soft white hands and long curled hair and light women’s voices and a smooth cheek pressed against her own - what kind of beast is Estella, then?

Would that she were a man, she thinks. Then she could be as cruel as she liked. She could rip up everyone in the world except her wife, whose delicate fingers she could kiss, whose voice she would not flinch to hear.

Sometimes she thinks of telling Pip.

But Estella does not tell Pip anything. Particularly not this, because she does not make a habit of thinking about it at all, except at night when she is very very cold.

Instead she sits with Pip and makes herself languid and apathetic and wishes she could feel a fraction of what he does.

 _I should like to love you,_ she thinks, when Pip has gone, his light traveling away down the hall. _I should like to, but I fear I cannot love you, nor anyone at all._

It is a kinder thought, that she cannot love anyone at all. Better than the alternative. The other idea she culls from all but the deepest parts of her mind, the same deep parts where she holds thoughts of a girl - much older now, but still with ragged clothing and large soft wet dark eyes - and the warmth of their fleeting touches when they exchanged cards.


End file.
